Edmund White/Samuel Delany, Vol. 16, No. 3

By: White, Edmund

Book Overview

Edmund White / Samuel Delany Number This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564780996
• ISBN13: 9781564780997
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 250 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent issue of this fine journal, devoted to two important American writers

Samuel R. Delany and Edmund White have the following obvious points in common: they are roughly the same age (Delany is 67, White 69), they both lived for many years in New York City (Delany was born there), both have written fiction and nonfiction in a wide variety of genres, styles and forms, and both teach now at major East coast universities located not far from each other (Delany at Temple in Philadelphia, White at Princeton). Both are also out gay men, and homosexuality has informed much of the fiction and nonfiction of each, in particular the significant autobiographical writings that they have published. There the overt similarities probably end; I say "probably" because I really don't know either writer's ouevre (both are fairly prolific) all that well - White's not at all apart from a couple of pieces in this journal. White strikes me as a more direct and mainstream stylist; Delany is nothing if not difficult, even obtuse. This issue of the terrific thrice-yearly 'Review of Contemporary Fiction' collects 12 pieces by or about the writings of White, and 13 on Delany. I've read White's piece on the Norwegian Nobel-prize winning writer Knut Hamsun, in which he grapples with his love for the work and his disgust with the fascist-sympathizing man behind it; it's short but very powerful, one of the best briefs I've seen on the difficulty of reconciling art and man. The rest of the White stuff I haven't explored, and probably will wait to do so until I've read some of his full-length works. I have perused most of the Delany section though; for newcomers to his work I'd suggest taking a look at James Sallis' introduction - focusing on Delany's concerns with language - and K. Leslie Steiner's short interview, which discusses the authors views on the relationships between science fiction as genre and literature. Robert Elliott Fox's short meditation on Delany's very very long and dense DHALGREN again explores language for the most part; Mac Laidlaw's funny bit about his years of NOT reading this massive "unreadable" novel is a nice counterpoint. There are short checklists for both White and Delany at the ends of their respective sections. The volume is rounded out by a couple dozen book reviews, mostly of fiction, much of it interesting and still on my to-read list, including works by Robert Coover and Steven Millhauser, and there is an index to the three issues of 1996. A complete listing of the contents may be found on the website of the publisher, the Dalkey Archive. This is the only issue of TROCF that I actually own, but I'm definitely interested in others - those interested in modernist or postmodern fiction could do much worse than to pick up this volume, and those on such writers as George Perec, Joseph McElroy, and William H. Gass among other relatively obscure writers of difficult - but hopefully lasting - fiction.